our peopleprestigious award for john cornellCongratulations to John Cornell, Senior Technologist with Alcoa’s Technology Delivery Group (TDG) based at the Kwinana refinery, Western Australia, who was presented with a Distinguished Service Award from the Australian Microscopy and Microanalysis Society Inc., for his contribution to microscopy in Australia.

Microscopy, both visible and electron, is a critical skill used in many of TDG’s breakthrough technologies, the latest of which is a new method of controlling our refineries’ precipitation circuits, netting us tens of millions of dollars per year. The basis for this was a new microscopic technique developed by UWA and TDG’s Gerald Roach and John Cornell – this has now become a standard industry technique. TDG also uses advanced microscopic techniques for a range of other initiatives, from oxalate control through to the analysis of scale and metallurgical problems in Alcoa refineries globally.

“To ensure that TDG maintains cutting edge knowledge in this important area, we have a long standing partnership with the University of Western Australia’s Centre for Microscopy, Characterisation and Analysis (CMCA), home to state of the art equipment and expertise,” said Alcoa’s Director Research and Development Global Refining, Dr Ian Harrison.

“To be truly effective we need world class expertise and John has made it a personal endeavour to achieve this during his career with TDG.

“John has been on the organising committee for three international microscopy conferences in Perth, including the current one that includes around 1200 of the world’s foremost experts in this area. He has also been a committee member of the Western Australian Society for Electron Microscopy for around 30 years. Needless to say John is Global Refining’s foremost expert in this important field of technology.”

Two awards were presented at a major international meeting, which included the Asia-Pacific Microscopy Conference, the International Conference on Nanoscience and Nanotechnology and the Australian Conference on Microscopy and Microanalysis: one to John and the other to world expert, Professor Brendan Griffin from UWA, with whom John is a long time collaborator.